Epilogue
SONG: ANTI-SOCIAL BY WHILE SHE SLEEPS
Dimitri
Five days of domestic bliss made me believe in miracles.
Not literally. I was still a pragmatic criminal with a body count and trust issues.
But watching Giulia curl up next to me every morning, her hand automatically moving to her still-flat stomach, made me think maybe impossible things happened occasionally.
Like happiness. Like peace. Like the possibility that I could be something other than my father's son.
"What about Alexei?" Giulia asked from the passenger seat.
"My third lieutenant is named Alexei. That's confusing."
"What about Alessandro? It works in both Russian and Italian."
"Alessandro Morozov." I tested the sound. "Not terrible."
"High praise from you."
"I'm Russian. We specialize in grudging approval."
She laughed and reached over to lace her fingers through mine where they rested on the gear shift. Five days of this. Five days of easy affection and baby name discussions and pretending we were normal people instead of crime family royalty expecting an heir.
The pretending was my favorite part.
"Natalia for a girl," I suggested.
"After your grandmother?"
"She was terrifying and brilliant. Good qualities in a Morozov woman."
"What if she's a Rossie woman?"
"She'll be both. Doubly terrifying. We should probably start saving for her future legal fees now."
Giulia squeezed my hand. "We're really doing this."
"Appears so. Too late to back out now."
"I'm not backing out. Just processing." She looked out the window at San Francisco passing by. Saturday afternoon traffic crawling through the Marina. "A month ago, I was a college student worried about finals. Now I'm married to a mob boss and pregnant with his potentially terrifying child."
"Life comes at you fast."
"Apparently."
I pulled into the hospital parking garage and found a spot near the elevator because Pakhans didn't circle looking for parking like civilians. We had people for inconveniences.
Giulia had been feeling better the last two days. Morning sickness had eased enough that she could keep down actual food instead of just crackers. Progress. The baby books I'd been secretly reading said the first trimester was hardest. We were surviving.
"How's Maxim doing?" she asked as we walked toward the elevator.
"Better. They're releasing him tomorrow. Doctor says full recovery expected within six weeks."
"That's good. Apolena will be relieved."
"Apolena will probably follow him home and continue her campaign of aggressive caretaking."
"She cares about him."
"She's grateful. He took bullets for her and that creates complicated feelings."
Giulia gave me a look. "You're really that oblivious?"
"About what?"
"Nothing. Never mind."
Women and their cryptic statements. Twenty-five years of interacting with the female half of humanity and I still couldn't decode half of what they said.
The elevator took us to the fourth floor. ICU had moved Maxim to a regular room yesterday. Another sign of improvement. Soon he'd be back at headquarters being professionally stoic and taking bullets for me like that was a reasonable life choice.
I should probably tell him to stop doing that. Though knowing Maxim, he'd ignore me and do it anyway. Loyalty was both his greatest strength and his most annoying trait.
"What about Viktor?" Giulia asked as we walked down the corridor.
"What about him?"
"For a name. Viktor Morozov. Very Russian. Very strong."
"Viktor would never let me hear the end of it. His ego is insufferable already."
"So that's a no?"
"That's a hard no. Also he'd expect to be godfather, and I have concerns about his influence on an impressionable child."
"Valid concerns."
We reached Maxim's room. The door was closed, but I didn't think anything of it. Hospital rooms had doors. Doors closed. Basic architecture.
I pushed it open without knocking and walked in still holding Giulia's hand. Istarted to say something about bringing contraband coffee, then stopped.
Because Maxim wasn't alone.
And he definitely wasn't just receiving friendly visits from my sister.
Apolena was in his hospital bed. Not sitting on the edge.
Not perched carefully on the side. In the bed.
Pressed against Maxim like they'd been surgically attached.
Her hands in his hair. His hands on her waist. Both of them kissing like they were trying to win a competition for most passionate display of affection.
Time slowed. My brain processed the image in excruciating detail. Photographic memory meant I'd remember this moment forever. Lucky me.
Maxim. My best friend. My second. The person I trusted most in the world.
Apolena. My baby sister. Twenty-three years old. The person I was supposed to protect from everything including terrible romantic decisions.
Together. Kissing. In a hospital bed. While I stood in the doorway holding my pregnant wife's hand and experiencing what could only be described as complete cognitive malfunction.
They hadn't noticed me yet, too absorbed in each other. Too busy being whatever this was.
Giulia squeezed my hand in warning or sympathy. Hard to tell which.
I found my voice somewhere between shock and rage and complete incomprehension.
"WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?"
The effect was immediate. Maxim and Apolena broke apart like they'd been electrocuted. Both turned to stare at me with matching expressions of absolute horror.
Apolena scrambled off the bed and knocked over the water pitcher in her haste. It crashed to the floor. Plastic clattered and water spread across linoleum tiles.
Nobody moved to clean it up.
"Dimitri," Apolena started, her face was red and lips swollen. Hair disheveled in a way that suggested this wasn't their first kiss. "I can explain."
"Explain." I repeated the word like it was foreign. "You can explain why you were kissing my second in a hospital bed."
"It's not what it looks like."
"It looks like you were kissing my second in a hospital bed."
"Okay, it's exactly what it looks like. But there's context."
"Context." Another word that had lost all meaning. "What context makes this acceptable?"
Maxim had gone very still. The stillness of someone calculating survival odds and not liking the math. Good. He should be calculating. He should be terrified.
"Boss," he said carefully. "I can explain."
"Can you? Because from where I'm standing there's not a lot of ambiguity about what I just witnessed."
"We didn't mean for you to find out like this."
"Find out what exactly? That you've been doing what? How long has this been happening?"
Silence. Both of them looking guilty as hell. Both of them clearly wondering if honesty or evasion was the better survival strategy.
I turned to Giulia. "Did you know about this?"
"I suspected," she admitted. "The way they looked at each other. The way Apolena talked about him. It seemed obvious."
"Obvious." I turned back to Maxim and Apolena. "Apparently I'm the only person in this room who didn't see this coming."
"You've been distracted," Apolena said. Small voice. Defensive. "With the alliance and Giulia and everything else."
"So you took advantage of my distraction to seduce my second?"
"I didn't seduce him!" She crossed her arms. "He kissed me first!"
"That's not helping," Maxim muttered.
"Well, it's true!"
I looked at Maxim. Really looked. He was still sitting up in the hospital bed. Still had bandages covering his chest. Still looked like someone who'd been shot three times and survived through sheer stubbornness.
Also looked guilty. And scared. And defiant. Complicated expression that suggested he knew he'd crossed a line but wasn't entirely sorry about it.
"You kissed her," I said flatly.
"Yes."
"My sister."
"Yes."
"After I specifically told you nothing could happen."
"You said nothing could happen unless she initiated. Technically she initiated by visiting constantly and being impossibly stubborn about leaving and looking at me like..." He stopped. "This isn't helping either."
"No. It's not." I was still holding Giulia's hand, squeezing probably too hard. She didn't complain. "How long?"
"The kiss just happened," Apolena said quickly. "Like two minutes before you walked in. This isn't some long secret relationship. This is new."
"Two minutes ago."
"Yes. I was visiting. We were talking. Things escalated."
"Things escalated." I rubbed my free hand over my face. "My sister. My second. Things escalated."
"Dimitri," Giulia said softly. "Maybe we should go. Let them explain properly."
"Explain what? I saw everything I needed to see."
"You saw a kiss. You didn't hear their side."
"Their side is they were kissing in a hospital bed while I thought they were just friends."
Maxim stood carefully, wincing because his chest was still healing. "Boss. I know this looks bad."
"Looks bad? It looks catastrophic."
"But I care about her. I've cared about her for a long time. And I know all the reasons this is inappropriate. The age gap. The position difference. Your very reasonable objections. But I care about her anyway."
"Caring about her and kissing her are different things."
"Are they? Because I'm pretty sure one leads naturally to the other."
"Not when one person is my baby sister and the other is my second."
"She's twenty-three. That's not a baby."
"To me she's a baby. To me she's always going to be three years old and needing protection from everything including bad decisions."
"I'm not a bad decision," Maxim said quietly. "I'm someone who loves her."
The room went silent. Complete. Absolute. Suffocating.
Loves her.
He'd said it out loud in front of me while my sister stood there looking like she might cry or faint or both.
"You love her," I repeated.
"Yes."
"For how long?"
"Over a year."
"A year." I looked at Apolena. She was crying now. Silent tears tracking down her face. "Did you know?"
"Not until two minutes ago when he told me right before he kissed me."
"Convenient timing."
"I was shot three times!" Maxim's voice rose. Frustrated. "I nearly died. That gives you perspective. Makes you realize life is short and wasting time on fear is stupid. So, yes, I told her. Finally. After a year of keeping it secret because I was terrified of your reaction."
"You should be terrified of my reaction. You kissed my sister."
"I love your sister. There's a difference."
We stood there in a hospital room that smelled like antiseptic and bad decisions. Four people arranged around a revelation nobody had been ready for.
Giulia tugged on my hand. "Dimitri, can we talk? Outside?"
"I'm in the middle of something."
"You're in the middle of making this worse. Come on."
She pulled me toward the door, and I let her. Mostly because staying seemed dangerous, and I wasn't sure what I'd say next. What I'd do next.
In the hallway she positioned herself between me and the door. A barrier between me and whatever confrontation I was about to start.
"Breathe," she said.
"I'm breathing."
"You're hyperventilating."
"I'm processing."
"You're panicking."
Maybe. Probably. Hard to tell when your entire world rearranged itself in thirty seconds.
"He kissed my sister," I said.
"He loves your sister."
"That's worse."
"Is it? You told me you'd be okay with it if she initiated."
"I said I wouldn't stand in the way. That's different from being okay with it."
"Dimitri." She cupped my face and made me look at her. "They're both adults. They clearly care about each other. And you walking in there and destroying it because you're scared isn't going to help anyone."
"I'm not scared."
"You're terrified. But not of Maxim. You're scared of losing Apolena. Of her growing up and making her own choices and not needing your protection anymore."
Uncomfortable how accurately she could read me.
"She's my baby sister."
"She's a twenty-three-year-old woman who gets to decide who she loves. Even if that person is your best friend."
"This is going to be complicated."
"Everything about our lives is complicated. This is just one more complication."
"What if he hurts her?"
"Then you kill him like you promised. But maybe give them a chance first."
I leaned against the wall and stared at the closed door of Maxim's room. Behind it, two people waited for my judgment. For my permission. For me to decide if their feelings were acceptable or forbidden.
Strange power to have. Unwelcome power. I'd told Maxim I wouldn't stand in the way if Apolena initiated.
Apparently, she had. Two minutes ago. With a kiss that had probably been building for months.
"I don't know how to handle this," I admitted.
"Nobody does. That's why it's called figuring it out." Giulia took my hand again. "But maybe we start by not yelling but listening. By remembering that Maxim has been loyal to you for twenty years and Apolena deserves to make her own choices."
"Even when her choices are questionable?"
"Especially then. That's what love is. Supporting people even when you disagree."
I looked at my wife. Five days ago I'd nearly lost her through stupidity and paranoia. Five days ago we'd almost destroyed everything because I couldn't trust that love was real.
Maybe I'd learned something after all.
"Fine," I said. "We go back in, and we listen. We try to be reasonable adults instead of reacting like children."
"Very mature of you."
"I'm growing as a person. It's exhausting."
She kissed me. Quick. "That's why I love you."
We walked back into the room. Maxim and Apolena were sitting next to each other on the bed. Not touching. Both looking like they expected execution.
I closed the door behind us. Leaned against it. Crossed my arms.
"Talk," I said. "Both of you explain this, all of it, and convince me this isn't the stupidest decision either of you have ever made."